Saturday, 5 May 2012

The Poll Clerk...

When you’re a self-employed,
part-time clerical worker, ad-hoc paid employment can be hard to come by, so
when I discovered that there were opportunities of earning some extra cash
doing ‘election work’ for the local
councilI duly applied. For the
General election of 2010 I was offered several hours work opening postal votes
prior to the event as well as the important-sounding job of ‘Poll Clerk’ for
the day itself. Poll Clerk training consisted of reading a glossy brochure and
attending a presentation for a couple of hours, neither of which was
particularly taxing. The envelopes thing was a breeze but the criminally early
start and subsequent 16 hour shift endured by poll clerks (and presiding
officers) was a challenge that I wasn’t keen to repeat. After the first time I
swore I’d never do it again….but a year later the memories of wrist-slitting
boredom had faded and I was skint enough to sign on the dotted line once again.
Unfortunately, although I’d been lucky enough to undertake a few hours paid
employment stuffing postal votes into envelopes a few weeks earlier, fate
intervened and a hideous and possibly highly contagious tummy bug the night
before Election Day rendered me incapable. When the letter from the local
council arrived early 2012 I wasn’t sure whether or not to accept the poll
clerk position again, but I figured that if they had faith in my abilities then
I should, at least, take the chance of some much-needed funds, and once again
sign on the dotted line.

As is the norm when I need to be
up early, I couldn’t sleep a wink the night before, so when I got up at 5.30am for breakfast I had serious doubts as to
whether or not I’d manage to stay awake until 10pm.
I shoved half a cup of tea down my throat but ended up binning my Weetabix as I
simply couldn’t face food at that ungodly hour. I then packed my bag with
enough snacks and bottled water to sustain me throughout the day and I
staggered, bleary eyed, out of the front door at 6.15am.
It was raining.

My polling station is just 10
minutes walk away and when I arrived my colleagues were already there, putting
up the voting booths and sticking posters on the walls with copious amounts of
blu-tac. I tried to force a smile as I put my things on the floor and attempted
to be helpful by tying string to the pencils and re-acquainting myself with the
voters register. By 7am we were ready for our first ‘customers’, however, by
now it was absolutely pouring down outside and it was fifteen long minutes
before anyone arrived. This was an ominous sign of things to come…

The only ‘entertainment’ we had
all day was when the ‘characters’ appeared. The bloke that was seemingly off his
face who staggered towards the booth shouting out “Who do I vote for?!” was
mildly amusing. We then had the over-excitable teen who’d just celebrated his
18th birthday and wanted the world to know that he was now old
enough to vote. The OAP done up to the nines in fake fur and gold sandals
really had made an effort this year! If you happen to be working
close to where you live, there’s always the chance that a familiar face will
appear. This is, indeed, a very welcome distraction and can boost your morale
enormously.

Some people just don’t understand
the system and believe that simply
living in the general vicinity of a polling station gives them an automatic
right to vote – even if they haven’t bothered to register, and then there’s
those who haven’t checked their polling card properly and have arrived at the
wrong place, and then moan when they’re told they can’t vote there. There are
the inevitable clerical errors where people have been missed off the list or
told the wrong information on the phone, and they get quite miffed when you
have to break the bad news to them that they won’t be allowed to vote today.
Rather glad that the Presiding Officer gets to do all of the difficult stuff.
Some voters feel the need to rant about the government but we have to remain
impartial and therefore simply indicate to them where the booths are and politely
hand them their voting slip.

You generally get through the
first couple of hours by getting to know your workmates, or if you already know
them, catching up on all their news and by eating most of the snacks you
brought along with you. I’ve been very lucky indeed to have been placed with
extremely personable co-workers, which has made the task far more bearable than
if I’d been lumbered with Norman (or
Norma) No-mates for the duration. Unfortunately, by about 10am you’re struggling to find anything new or
interesting to say and, to be frankly honest, you’re just too tired to force
yourself to be sociable (it’s hard enough putting on a cheery face for the
voters). The thought that you have another 12 hours of much-the-same begins to sink
in as you now remember why it was you said “Never again”.

The plastic chair you’ve been
sitting on makes your backside go numb but the only place to walk to is the
lavatory – which you end up doing so often that everyone thinks you have a
bladder issue. Having said that, if you have a kettle nearby
you consume so much coffee in order to stay awake that you really do need to
keep on ‘popping out’. You get flying visits
from candidates and their representatives, as well as from a gentleman (or lady)
whose job it is to inspect all the polling stations to make sure all is as it
should be and that the correct posters have been displayed etc. A community support officer might pop by, but with it tipping it down outside
there was never going to be any crowd control issues.

Noon seems to be a landmark time
on the painfully slow-moving clock as you’ve now completed the morning, but
there’s still another 10 hours before you can finally close the front doors on
the general public. You’ve read all of the newspapers you brought with you and
your eyes are now struggling to focus on the register. Your colleagues are
playing with ipods and iphones but are equally as bored.

Even though you know how annoying
it is you can’t help yourself and you simply HAVE to announce (on the hour) how
long there is left. “Nine hours to go” sounds daunting when you’ve already been
there 6 and a half hours. At 2pm you
hit a brick wall (metaphorically) and you find yourself feeling a tad surreal.
You are mind-numbingly bored, you’ve eaten so many sweets you feel sick and
you’re shattered. You try to do the crossword in the paper but your brain
doesn’t want to play, so you give up.

Little things can ease the
situation, such as a group of 4 all coming in to vote at once giving you
something to do for a whole two minutes. You go and sharpen the pencils even if they’re already sharp. By 6pm you’ve got to the over-tired stage and are now
rambling on boring your colleagues with tales of all your past holidays.
They’re just as bored and politely respond with tales of their own.

The final hour should, in theory,
be the light at the end of the tunnel, but in reality it feels as if the clock
has broken and time drags now like no other hour. You pace up and down (with
wobbly legs due to the plastic chairs cutting off your circulation at the knees
for the past 3 hours), itching to pack up, but you have to wait until exactly
10pm before you can at last remove all the posters and take down the booths.
You try not to trap your fingers as you fold down the tables and stack up the
chairs while the presiding officer completes their highly important
paperwork….and finally you hear the words you’ve been waiting to hear since 6.30am… “Thank you for all your help today, you
are now free to go!”

The rain had stopped as I
staggered home in the dark enjoying the cool air on my face and the sweet taste
of ‘freedom’. I’d been inside for 16 hours and yet it felt like a lifetime (I
have no idea why anyone who’s been in prison would ever want to break the law
again). Under my breath I was muttering “Never again” but I just know that once
I’ve caught up on some much-needed sleep and had some physiotherapy for my excruciating
back pain, if, next year, I’m offered the opportunity to receive a cheque in return
for one day’s worth of boredom, I’m more than likely going to sign on the
dotted line once again..…

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About Me

No matter what life has thrown in my general direction, as in the famous line from a Monty Python song, I’ve always tried to look on the bright side of life. I’ve usually done this in written format, taking life’s ups and downs and putting pen to paper, or, more recently, finger to keyboard, making light of the often annoying and occasionally slightly bizarre things that happen to me during my arduous journey from the cradle to the grave.
I now find myself disconcertingly rather much closer to the latter than the former, and thought that now might be a good time to share my musings with the rest of the world, before the ravages of time capture my brain cells and I finally surrender to senility.
I've written about a variety of topics, including a paranoia-inducing trip to the doctor's surgery, a particularly stressful shopping trip, my permanently confused life as a mature student at college, the wierd and wonderful OAPs at a weekly Workers Educational Association course I attended, and more.....